The Artificial Intelligence industry is rapidly growing as the public becomes more reliant on tools like ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind. Despite this quick growth, there’s very little transparency surrounding its internal workings. According to whistleblower advocates, just like the powerful developing sectors preceding it, AI industry employees are in desperate need of legal safeguards if they need to blow the whistle on potentially dangerous practices within their work.
In a new article for The National Law Review, Sophie Luskin, a Public Interest Law Clerk at the whistleblower law firm Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, details the urgent need for an AI whistleblower.
Luskin points to the strong historical precedent for sector-based whistleblower protections in most influential industries. For example, federal government whistleblowers are protected under the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act, and Wall Street works under Dodd-Frank in 2010. These legal shields are lacking for those working in the AI sector, however.
Luskin details that last year, thirteen brave AI whistleblowers issued a letter, “A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence”, highlighting their concerns around internal safety and security protocols AI industries are ignoring. In the letter, the whistleblowers detail safety concerns raised by AI companies themselves.
OpenAI acknowledges their “serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and social disruption” and promises that they “are going to operate as if these risks are existential.” Another AI company, Google DeepMind, noted that AI has the potential to aid in offensive cyber operations, deceive people through dialogue, manipulate people into carrying out harmful actions, and develop weapons. A joint coalition of experts on AI safety, CAIS, labelled the focus on mitigating the risk from extinction from AI “a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
However, according to Luskin, AI companies constantly avoid oversights to benefit from financial gains. Whistleblowers, she argues, are able to provide essential information to help regulate newly developing technology.
“Without information from whistleblowers, the ability of the U.S. government to police and regulate this newly developing technology is curtailed, risking heightening the technology’s risks to public health, safety, national security, and more,” Luskin writes. “Insiders must be able to disclose potential violations safely, freely, and appropriately to law enforcement and regulatory authorities.”
“It is critical that an AI whistleblower law pass through the 119th Congress,” Luskin continues. “Any such law must follow the solid precedents used in recent whistleblower legislation that has been passed, either unanimously or without any controversy, by Congress.”
In particular, Luskin argues that any proposed whistleblower law should follow the model of The Taxpayer First Act (26 U.S. Code § 7623(d)). The Act is the most recent example of a private sector whistleblower act that protects whistleblowers with necessary due process requirements. Luskin details seven elements of the law which need to be included in an AI whistleblower bill.
“Modern anti-fraud and public safety laws uniformly include whistleblower protections similar to those outlined above,” Luskin writes. “These include the laws such as the aforementioned Taxpayer First Act, as well as the Food Safety Modernization Act, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Anti-Money Laundering Act, and the National Transportation Security Act. Given the potential threats posed by AI, how companies have mishandled deployment, and the importance that emerging AI technology is safely developed, there is an urgent need for insiders working in the AI sector to be properly protected when they lawfully report threats to the public interest.”
National Whistleblower Center has set up an Action Alert allowing supporters to write to Congress demanding protections for artificial intelligence whistleblowers.
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